1. Contract Laws-impact contract formation
2. Execution Laws-govern the execution of the work e.g. issuance and regulatory permits
3. Settlement Laws-relates to the dispute resolution
4. Licensing Laws-govern business practices as well as personal qualifications standards

• Labour relations
• Workplace health and safety
• Employment standards, including general holidays, annual vacations, working hours, unjust dissmissals, minimum wage, layoff procedures and severance pay.

• Equal employment opportunities
• Worker's Compensation Board
• Employment Insurance

• Unions
• Contractor-Employment Relationships
• Collective Bargaining in Labour relations
• Administration of the Unior Contract

• Hiring procedure
• Work rules
• Compensation package
• Dispute resolution procedure
• Determining the responsibility for supply of tools

• the relationship is now between contractor and unions, so this is now gone
• Employment conditions are discussed with the union business agent
• employees feel they owe their allegiance to their respectie unions

• Ignoring a bargaining request
• Failure to appoint a bargaining representative with power to reach an agreement
• Attempts to deal directly with employees during negotiations
• Refusal to consider proposals
• Failure to respond with counterproposals
• Antiunion activities
• Refusal to sign an agreement

• It is not anti-union
• Pay is less than unions but it is a guaranteed annual income
• Fringe benefit is similar to union
• Open shop contractor has the right to decide about:
• the crew size
• job assignment

Foreman

Lead craftsperson

Journeyman craftspeople

Apprentice (in training under the supervision of a person skilled in a specific trade)

Helper (has no training for a specific trade)

• Superintendent (Some projecst have more than one superintendent)
• manages jobsite activities
• Assistant superintendents, project engineers, or area superintendents
• May be used to control segments of the work
• Foreman
• Lead craftsperson
• Journeyman craftspeople
• Apprentice
• Helper

• The contractor's jobsite representative
• Control costs, time and quality
• Responsible for 
• Timely productivity
• Coordinating subcontractors
• Daily Schedules
• Hiring and firing employees
• Determining employee's skills
• Ensuring proper tools are available to the craftspeople

• Leadership, visualization, planning and organizing skills
• The ability to motivate people
• Understanding the technical and mechanical subjects
• Decision maker
• Innovative and resourceful
• Ability to adapt to changes
• Teaching skills
• Strong work ethic
• Cooperative

• Critical link between superintendent and craftspeople
• Foreman is responsible for:
• Evaluating the workman
• Making sure:
• Craft's skills fit the work
• Craft complete their work
• Using the labour, equipment, and materila efficiently
• Tool security
• Have technical knowledge about the work
• Ensure proper tools are available to the craftspeople

• Decrease of theft and poor workmanship
• Less occurence of friction and polarization
• Decrease in material waste

• Project specific
• Time specific
• Task specific

• Costly equipment compared to labour cost
• Adverse weather conditions
• Resource constraints (e.g. Labour shortage, equipment constraints, etc.)
• For critical activities

• Apprentice training program through unions
• Training programs outside unions
• Vocational trainings at community colleges

• Payroll information
• Historical reports e.g. labour productivity
• Cost control
• Production control

• Easy to use
• Timely information
• Ability to prevent misuse
• Ability to solve problems for timekeeping
• Ability to verify an employee's time
• Audit procedure for accurate recording of quantities and cost codes

1. Weekly Labour Report
• weekly and collective labour costs versus budgeted hours and dollars
• Generated from the time card
2. Weekly Quantity Report
• Compares work activities with cost codes
• Work completed metrics (period, to date, to go)

• Verifying the worked hours
• Set productivity standards

• analyzing the progress of different activities
• projecting the final cost and schedule for the different work activities

• Project work conditions
• Suppliers and Supply chain management
• Government Overregulations
• Project uniqueness
• Resource management
• Technology
• Management
• Contractual issues
• Change orders
• Field rework
• Design-related issues
• Site congestion and organization
• Communications
• Construction accidents

• Internal factors
• Within the control of firm/organization
• External factors
• Outside of control of firm/organization

• Local climate and weather
• Job size and complexity
• Job-site accessibility 
• Cultural background

• Reduced labour productivity
• attributed to reduced human performance due to severe weather condition
• Work stoppage atributed to:
• inability of construction personnel to work under severe weather conditions
• compliance with safety regulations

• Model, quantify and estimate weather impact before and during construction operations
• Facilitate the application of risk analysis planning and sceduling
• Helps to prepare realistic schedules, cost estimated and reliable bids.

• Logistic problems
• Learning reqired for adjusting to the new environment

Congested sites

• Impact worker's performance
• Increase the time and cost required for construction operations 

• cultural differences are one of the most important sources of diversity and primary determinants of labour productivity
• Understanding the cultural characteristics that determine why labour productivity is higher in one firm (or city, state, nation, industry etc.) than another is of vital importance

1. Learn to communicate effectively with people with different cultures
2. Encourage flexibility
3. Provide enough training
4. Create the culture that has zero tolerance for discrimination

• Quality of supply chain
• Poor supply-chain management regularly increases project cost and duration
• In order to achieve higher level of quality in supply chain, there must be a systems perspective of the production activities of autonomous production units (subcontractors and suppliers
• Select suppliers pursuing and upgrading and research & developement strategy
• Select suppliers with more educated and experienced workforce, which result in higher level of productivity

• Impositon of restrictions for protection of the environment and historical districts
• Requirements for community participation in major construction projects
• Extraordinary labour protection laws
• Excessive regulatory policies
• Excessive health and safety legislations

• Environmental factors
• Landscape
• weather
• physical location
• Aesthetic factors

1. Labour
2. Material
3. Equipment

Poor materials management = Large and avoidable costs during construction

Consequences of early purchase of material

• capital may be tied up and interest charges incurred on the excess inventory of materials
• materials may deteriorate during storage or be stolen or wasted

Consequences of late purchase of material

•  delays and extra expenses

• Lack of planning
• transport within site
• improper materials
• interference
• unnecessary paperwork

• timely flow of material
• determine what items must be ordered
• determine when they should be ordered 
• determin how much of each item should be ordered in each time period
• material selection
• have knowledge about the latest developments of new constrction materials

• selection of the appropriate type and size of equipment
• which affects the required amount of time and effort

• Unavailability or lack of equipment 
• Idleness or down times

Have proper 'planning' process

• Labour characteristics
• Age
• Skill
• Experience
• Worker motivation
• Absentee time
• Employee turnover
• Idleness
• workers waiting for instructions
• rework
• Labour availability
• due to various factors such as:
• working in remote areas
• high transportation and moving costs
• early retirement of older crafts workers
• shortage of labour will result in:
• bringing in more labour
• schedule overtime work
• or both
• In either case, the labour efficiency will be reduces in addition to incurring additional expenses
• Construction overtime and schedule acceleration
• the most serious consequences of scheduled overtime include
• premium wages
• lower labour efficiency
• increased absenteeism
• increased accidents
• higher incidence of faulty workmanship
• Labour unrest
• greater competition for labour pool
• attraction of less proficient workers
• Lack of enough training

• Project Managers needs to know:
• how to establish charter
• how to establish reward system
• how to manage work teams
• People need to learn
• team expectations
• being a team member
• roles and responsibilities
• basic functioning of teams

• lack of material
• project confusion
• communication breakdowns
• rework
• unavailibility of tools and equipment
• disrespectful treatment
• lack of recognition
• little participation in decision making
• lack of cooperation amoun crafts
• incomplete engineering
• restrictive or burdensome procedures and regulations
• poorly trained foreman
• substandard employee facilities
• management labour conflicts

• Scheduling reasonable and fair work hour
• long work hours, one of the main reason for workers not to perform at their best
• Construction training
• workforce skill improvement programs are essential for productivity improvement in the construction industry
• skilled workers not only perform to the best, but also know how to properly use construction equipment and materials to prevent idle times and downtimes

• Tools and machinery have increased both in power and complexity
• these advances in technology can significantly modify skill requirements
• this can create difficulties in separating the contribution of technology, management, and labour to productivity
• technology can help boost productivity
• use of new equipment and innovative methods
• automation of at least part of the construction process

• Proper scheduling
• Proper planning
• Proper controlling

• Intensity
• Number and frequency of change orders
• Ratio of change orders hours to contract hours
• Timing in relation to project duration
• Higher labour productivity losses to occur toward the end of project duration
• Type of Work
• Level of complexity
• Interdenpendency
• Project phase
• Changes during the design phase vs construction phase

Proper change management system leads to higher productivity:

• Establishing change control system
• Improving communication system
• Using formal change request form
• Using change control log

• Improving the quality management system
• Improving the communication system between all parties involved in construction operation
• Adequate training
• Avoiding out of sequence of work
• Avoiding unnecessary changes

Design errors = Claims and Disputes = Adversarial Relationship = Lower Productivity

• Constructability-results in saving and higher productivity
• Innovation-can introduce construction enconomies and advance labour productivity
• Geotechnical Investigation-Poor investigations creat sever problems in the next stages, is time and cost consuming to solve and results in low productivity
• Layout-Adverse impact of poor layout on construction productivity.
• inadequate space for staging
• limited access for materials and personnel
• restrictions on the use of certain construction methods
• Project definition-Poor definition will result in errors and/or ommissions in the design that leads to higher labour productivity losses during construction
• Inadequate specification-will result in delay in schedule or rework that in turn will lead to lower level of productivity
• Standardization-approach will result in overall savings in the project and lead to higher construction productivity

• Constructability reviews
• Value engineering techniques
• Using of prefabicated and pre-cast components in the design
• Adequate specification

• Geographical conditions
• Technical requirements
• Number of crews
• Access limitations

• Proper logistic planning
• Using preassembly and prefabrication techniques
• Proper construction site housekeeping
• Using simulation and vitural construction
• Using 'compact construction equipment'
• Utilizing proper construction materials
• Adapting standard construction techniques and space saving construction methods.
• Developing and effective safety program

Helps to:

• Evaluate performance
• Identify problems
• Leads to discussing solutions
• Take the necessary steps to keep the job within the budget and schedule

Direct Costs

• Medical
• Premiums of WCB benefits
• Liability and property loss

Indirect Costs

• Reduced productivity
• Delays in project schedule
• Administrative time
• Damage to equipment and facility 

Safety Programs help create a safe work environment that motivates workers to work productively. Components of an effective safety program

Safety training

Identifying and eliminating safety hazards

Recognizing workers who promote and try to maintain safety procedures